2023-10-18
1. Introduction
Learning Objectives
- You should be able to critically analyse how data is visualised
- You should be able to judge a figure’s clarity and potential for misunderstanding
- You should be able to identify potential sources of bias
- You should understand how to create effective figures for your own work
Background Reading
- Introduction to Data Visualisation
- Interactive Data Visualisation examples
- Additional information:
Exercise: Ten figures (three per student)
- For your assigned figure, consider the following:
- What type of data is being presented?
- Are the data presented effectively? (why/why not?)
- How can the data presentation be improved?
- Use the DOI provided to find the paper the figure is from, if you need more information than the figure legend
- Fill in the pro forma with your answers to the questions above (one sentence each)
2. Summary Results
Responses by figure
- We received 32 ratings in total (at three figures per student, this is 10.7 students responding)
Overall effectiveness
- How was effectiveness scored, distributed across all figures?
Overall understandability
- How was understandability scored, distributed across all figures?
Overall appeal
- How was appeal scored, distributed across all figures?
Time taken per figure
- How long did you take, per figure?
3. Results By Figure
Effectiveness/Understandability/Appeal
- How effective/understandable/appealing did you think each figure was?
Colours/Fonts/Labels
- How well did each figure use colours, fonts, and labels?
Statistics/Whitespace/Data
- How well did each figure use statistics, whitespace, and data?
Reproduction
- How well did you think you could reproduce each figure?
4. Specific Figures
Figure 1 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.029)
Figure 1 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.029)
Figure 1 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.029)
- Suggested improvements:
- Increase contrast between font and background (black on dark blue, red/gray on white) \(\rightarrow\) easier to read
- 1D is not colour-blind friendly
- Scales on A and B are very different, which could mislead the reader
- Numbers on phylogenetic trees (A&B) are not explained in fig legend (bootstraps? but this could be made clearer)
- 1D boxplot or similar for G & H instead of bar charts
- Use of whitespace could be better: this feels quite cluttered and the flow from A \(\rightarrow\) B \(\rightarrow\) C \(\rightarrow\) D is not very clear
Figure 1 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.029)
| improvements |
|---|
| I feel that the data could have been simplified and broken down a bit more. It requires a lot of reading of the figure legend to work out what the data is showing and is not as easily read. There is a lot of figures crammed into the one area so the data could have been separatd a bit more to make it less overwhelming to read. |
Figure 2 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.028)
Figure 2 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.028)
Figure 2 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.028)
- Suggested improvements:
- Images missing scale bars/scale bars hard to see
- Good to show actual data instead of barcharts
- Red/green fluorescence, and rainbow colour scale hard to read/interpret / not particularly accessible for colourblind readers
- Data could perhaps be simplified/summarized, e.g. with E or F moved to supplemental
- y-axis scales a little misleading
- Use of whitespace could be better
Figure 2 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.028)
| improvements |
|---|
| It felt a bit cluttered and hard to read, I’d space out the figure legend a bit more to be more specific than cluster 2A, 2B together to make it clear what section means what and for figure 2F use a line of best fit to help declutter all the points. |
| F is a little crowded and the significance indication is very similar to data points, so could be confusing. |
| Scatter plots could be clearer |
Figure 3 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.030)
Figure 3 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.030)
Figure 3 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.030)
- Suggested improvements:
- Inconsistent y-axis scales make it difficult to compare panels in part A
- Why have mirrored y-axes at all?
- Map and phylogenetic trees are missing scales
- Colour choices between AB and CDE can be a little confusing
- Text, particularly in panel E, too small to read clearly
- Reasonably good use of whitespace
Figure 3 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.030)
| improvements |
|---|
| less busy would be best as its overwhelmin gin figure E and F |
| Not sure why they used two different colour schemes for representing March and February in figure D - perhaps just use the same one. |
| more straightforward |
| more text description of 3C and change colours in3D |
Figure 4 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.016)
Figure 4 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.016)
Figure 4 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.016)
- Suggested improvements:
- Repetitive parts of y-axes could be simplified (all are normalized to GAPDH)
- y-axes need to have the same scale
- would you fit a straight line to that?
- Good colour choices
- Layout could have been improved – should be 3 rows with 1 column for each IFN, to make it easier for the reader to compare e.g. A, G, and M
Figure 4 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.016)
| improvements |
|---|
| The figure looks cluttered and could have been better presented in transparent boxes to differentiate the data types being shown. |
| Using more than one type of data representation, and making sure that data is easier to distinguish. Maybe even combining some to allow for easy comparison. |
| Can change to another type of data visualisation such as Box and Whisker Plot |
Figure 5 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.029)
Figure 5 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.029)
Figure 5 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.029)
- Suggested improvements:
- A flow chart illustrating the FACS technique chosen here would be helpful for the reader
- Different scales on the x and y axes may be confusing and potentially misleading to readers
- B-D, F – show the datapoints as 1D scatterplot?
- G – fluorescence micrograph not colourblind friendly
- Use of the same colour for tumor, adenoma, IBD lesion may potentially be misleading
Figure 5 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.029)
| improvements |
|---|
| // |
| Try to simplify it and make it more clear |
| adjust scales |
| Better scaling of graphs. More succinct and clear figure legend which pertains to the data presented. |
| Pair box plots with scatter plots will help the reader understand the distribution of the data points better |
Figure 6 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.022)
Figure 6 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.022)
Figure 6 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.022)
- Suggested improvements:
- Good example of flow chart to illustrate experimental design
- D-G could perhaps be combined into one graph – reduce cognitive burden on the reader
- Some confusion in the colour scheme (P11 lysate/F2 lysate both indicated in green, inconsistent use of red, orange)
- Nice to see box plots overlaid with datapoints
Figure 6 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.022)
| improvements |
|---|
| each section is quite busy-looking, maybe spreading them out and making the labels a bit more simple |
| include each generation in C for consistency |
Figure 7 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.023)
Figure 7 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.023)
Figure 7 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.023)
- Suggested improvements:
- Good use of flow diagram to illustrate experimental procedure
- Text too small to read easily
- Colours rather bewildering and hard to interpret, especially in G
- heatmap in I difficult to accurately interpret
- use of whitespace could be better
- axis labels in B and F could be clearer
Figure 7 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.023)
| improvements |
|---|
| Better colour selection, less colours where unneccessary, more whitespace |
| use slightly brighter colours, the dull colours look similar and its difficult to decern them |
| Make it more spaces and change to a better visualisation type such as bar chart which is clearer. |
| simpflify it |
| Graphs could have been made larger to make it easier to read the data points and results. Words were blurred due to being too small. |
| Use more appropriate colour/pattern scheme. |
Figure 8 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.003)
Figure 8 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.003)
Figure 8 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.003)
- Suggested improvements:
- A colour scale may be difficult to interpret – some shades seem very close, size of dots hard to classify
- good to show datapoints
- y axes in C should be same scale
- t-SNEs difficult to read as presented
- red/green colour palette not colourblind friendly
- inconsistent use of colours between panels
- scale bars missing for RNA ISH (H, right panels)
Figure 8 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.08.003)
| improvements |
|---|
| make some of the figures bigger as they are a little small and i have to zoom to see them better |
| Not sure. |
| Looks a bit cluttered, not very eye-catching so maybe space it out a bit and add better colour |
Figure 9 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.024)
Figure 9 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.024)
Figure 9 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.024)
- Suggested improvements:
- colours in B are dark/hard to distinguish
- different axes in D and E make it difficult to compare data
- circular presentation of chromosomes is confusing/misleading
- reddish/green colour choices might be OK but there are better options
- A doesn’t add much value to the figure
- may be better ways to present B – lines through datapoints?
Figure 9 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.024)
| improvements |
|---|
| Figure E’s error bars have a weird colour that makes them look faded and hard to look at |
| Maybe use more contrasting colours |
| F and G were difficult to understand/visualise. Text was rather small and difficult to read. Requires the reader to look between the figure legend and data to understand it is showing. The colours were also not extremely clear making it difficult to see clear groups. Figure E was particularly difficult to interpret due to a blurred effect of the colours used in the graph. |
| Better labelling of graphs with age groups, error bars on bar graphs, more breakdown of complicated data into readable graphs, more detailed figure legend. |
Figure 10 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.006)
Figure 10 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.006)
Figure 10 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.006)
- Suggested improvements:
- kinetic data better presented in a table
- concentration of what?
- include keys with figures, don’t make the reader look back and forth with the legend
- Coloured line in B not explained in key or figure legend
- match y-axes scales in B
- confusing/unnecessary to split H into two graphs
- include full colour key in G (missing purple), H (orange)
- Text could be a little larger to make it easier to read
- Good flow from A-H, good use of whitespace
Figure 10 (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.07.006)
| improvements |
|---|
| Layout figure A and B better |
5. Summing Up
General Comments
- Colour choices
- Larger figures/graphs, more space between figures/graphs
- Too much data per figure
- Split into multiple figures
- Remove unnecessary data (how do we define this?)
- “The data is presented in a manner that would likely be inaccessible for people without prior experience. A move toward a more palatable/digestible format will facilitate better science communication in the future.”
Visualising Data About Data Visualisation
- What did you say about figure effectiveness?
Visualising Data About Data Visualisation
- What words did you use to describe figure improvements?
Data Visualisation is Not Neutral
